Musica che affronta il silenzio - Scritti su Toru Takemitsu - Pavia ...

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Peter Burt
Western and Japanese music. He would therefore be happy with a record sleeve depicting
traditional Japanese instruments’.
Yes, indeed, it is true that Takemitsu wrote November Steps. He also wrote a few other
pieces for traditional instruments, such as Eclipse, Distance, Voyage, Autumn, In an Autumn
Garden, Ceremonial. But there are no more than seven works of this kind amongst
more than a hundred pieces for the concert hall (amongst the film soundtracks there are a
few more, mostly for narrative reasons). And, as for the attempt to create a ‘fusion’ of East
and West in November Steps, here it is salutary to remind ourselves of what Takemitsu
himself said in an interview for the French daily Libération, where he rejects this idea as ‘a
gigantic misunderstanding’ (Leblé 1990). Elsewhere he has written:
When I composed November Steps […] I thought about Kipling’s famous dictum:
‘West is West, East is East’. I thought about expressing opposition to this way of
thinking through my own music… Along the way, my attempt to go against Kipling’s
dictum began to diminish: as I searched for notes on the staff line, it became apparent
to me that Japanese sounds and Western sounds are completely different. It felt like a
ridiculous error to bring biwa and shakuhachi into the context of a work for Western
orchestra. (Takemitsu 2004: 205)
The record sleeve with traditional Japanese instruments, therefore, is no less inappropriate.
What other kind of sleeve would suit him, then? At this point, other admirers of the composer’s
music might say: ‘Let us go back to that statement about Mount Fuji. Let us remind
ourselves of what Takemitsu said: that, “inside him”, Fujiyama took two forms. The second
of these, it is true – the one with the nationalistic associations – he does not like. But the
first – the Fuji which “resides in beautiful natural scenery” – this he likes very much. So
then, here is one aspect of Takemitsu’s “Japaneseness”: his typically Japanese love of
nature (in Takemitsu’s case, in fact, this “nature” was always Japanese: despite his travels
all over the world, he never took any interest in foreign landscapes as sources of “artistic”
inspiration). And, amongst the manifestations of nature in Japan, he was interested above
all in the traditional Japanese garden – as is revealed by the titles of many of his works: In
an Autumn Garden, Garden Rain, etc. Therefore, I think that he would have been very
pleased by an image of a Japanese garden on the record sleeve’.
To this idea I would reply: ‘yes and no’. Yes because, naturally, it is true that
Takemitsu was greatly influenced by nature, above all by the formalised art of the Japanese
garden. As he said of his work The Dorian Horizon:
Sometimes my music follows the design of a particular existing garden. At times it may
follow the design of an imaginary garden I have sketched. Time in my music may be
said to be the duration of my walk through these gardens. I have described my selection